Rapporteur of the 1980 Hague Convention proposes “reinterpreting” the treaty to take gender-based violence into account

Being the first female rapporteur of an HCCH convention was a milestone, although perhaps a minor detail in her career. “Thank you for remembering me,” Pérez-Vera began on the subject. That’s because her name resonates rather due to other feats, for which she is actually used to talking to the press.

Now, for example, Pérez-Vera observes how the Hague Convention which she helped draft fails to protect children if it does not take into account the violence suffered by mothers.

In more than half of the world, year after year, nearly 2,000 migrant women are accused of abducting their own children. This is a global phenomenon from the 21st century, as la diaria has previously reported, with stories of binational families trapped between the 1980 Hague Convention and a human rights limbo.

Foreign mothers like Maria make up 75% of international child abduction cases. That’s more than triple the rate of male parents, who account for 23%, according to the fifth and latest HCCH data. The gender gap has triggered warnings of biases and risks in the Hague Convention’s applicability.

From the United Nations, for example, three rapporteurs have denounced that the 1980 treaty currently violates women and children victims of domestic violence, forcing them to live with their abusers and contravening fundamental human rights obligations to be protected by its state parties. The situation has been deemed “inadmissible” in a joint letter sent to the HCCH in 2023.

Ninety-four per cent of abducting mothers are primary caregivers with guardianship of their children. The treaty’s authors did not foresee the current landscape, au contraire of when its text was conceived, Pérez-Vera stressed.

I believe that the fundamental element of change that was not taken into account was gender-based violence – it certainly existed but had not been made evident. We had not been aware that it was a phenomenon that was going to have such an impact on the lives of women and minors.

Source: Rapporteur of the 1980 Hague Convention proposes “reinterpreting” the treaty to take gender-based violence into account

Affordable housing for trans women to be built in Darlinghurst

Sydney’s first dedicated affordable housing project for transgender women is set to be built in Darlinghurst, in Sydney’s inner-city.

“I am proud the City of Sydney is helping to provide affordable housing to trans women, as part of a sale of surplus residential property,” Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore wrote on Instagram. “Trans women are some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and often face rejection and isolation from their families of origin and the broader community.”

In May of last year, NSW Premier Chris Minns tasked government agencies with identifying surplus land and selling them to organisations working to provide housing for those in need. This excess land scheme was part of his attempt at improving housing supply in the state.

Homelessness for all women, particularly older women, in New South Wales is a massive issue. Last year’s census delivered shocking statistics showing a 48 per cover rise in homelessness for women, with a massive 78 per cent rise for women aged 65 to 74.

Domestic and family violence is one of the main drivers of homelessness, with the latest data from Homelessness NSW showing that, in 2020 and 2021, only 3 per cent of women fleeing violence received the long term housing they needed.

Homelessness NSW Trina Jones has told Women’s Agenda that the state “is the second lowest funded service system in the country and has the second highest rate of homelessness.”

This is “because they physically do not have enough people and resources to help the volume of people who need support,” she said.

Source: Affordable housing for trans women to be built in Darlinghurst

Join us for the launch of ‘Sister in Law’ | UK

In Sister in Law, Harriet tells the shocking stories of some of those who have come to her for assistance and shines a feminist light on the landscape of arcane laws and byzantine systems, skewed towards male behaviour and responses, through which she has steered them.

Harriet has been at the forefront of some historic and ground-breaking legal victories. Frequently working with women who have survived male violence or abuse, sometimes with the bereaved families of those who did not survive, her work has led her to challenge the police, CPS, government departments and the prison and immigration detention system.

Source: Join us for the launch of ‘Sister in Law’

Six months of paid parental leave approved by Senate

The government’s expansion of paid parental leave to 26 weeks has passed the Senate today and will become law.

It means from 1 July this year, more than 180,000 families will benefit from an extra two weeks of leave (22 weeks in total). This number will then increase to 24 weeks from July 2025 and 26 weeks from July 2026.

The changes are designed to encourage families with two parents to share the care, with four weeks reserved for each parent.

With the changes to paid parental leave now approved, the next step for the government is to legislate its recent announcement that it will pay superannuation payments to those using the government-funded paid parental leave scheme.

Source: Six months of paid parental leave approved by Senate

Ministers face court action as woke indoctrination ‘runs riot’ in UK schools

Three Cabinet Ministers have been warned they could face court action after being accused of letting woke indoctrination “run riot” in British schools.

Maths teacher Kevin Lister and two parents have approached the High Court about trans campaigners promoting gender identity ideology in classrooms.

The Bad Law Project, which is supporting the court action, argued gender ideology is a political matter and subsequently could fall foul of the Education Act.

Lister, who was sacked for using the wrong pronouns, said: “My 20 years of teaching A-level came to an abrupt end when I was sacked and marched off the premises for refusing to call a girl a boy.

“The Education Department can waffle on endlessly about their meaningless guidance to schools – in practice schools and their trans activists allies are being allowed to run riot.”

Lead solicitor Gordon Davies added: “The law is quite clear – political indoctrination in schools is illegal and must not be tolerated by ministers, officials and headteachers.

Source: Ministers face court action as woke indoctrination ‘runs riot’ in UK schools

The performance of a lifetime | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

In March 2022 Dylan Mulvaney saw a way to take his barely-concealed disdain for women up a level, with predictable success. After his career as a musical actor had stalled due to the Covid pandemic, with people finding solace daily on Tik Tok, wily Dylan invented a new role that guaranteed his future wealth and success. He announced he was embarking on a journey of “being a girl” and began a series of videos documenting this ludicrous notion.

Shortly before this year-long, very public “transition”, Mulvaney performed a pilot video for his current lucrative act. In it he told the viewer that he “had trouble finding roles” so a friend had invented one for him, a “femme character”. His character wears a pink dress and pearls, white gloves and ankle socks.

Now, just over a year later, Dylan Mulvaney has highly paid “partnerships” with a number of companies including Budweiser, Kate Spade and — during the past week, to great objection — the Sportwear giant Nike.

When a man “performs woman” in front of women to such a humiliating degree, when he waggles and jiggles and implies that weakness and silliness are inherent to being a woman who plays sport, women appropriately see this for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is.

All of this encapsulates the stereotype of women as emotionally fragile, frivolous spendthrifts, imprudent around clothes and financially inept.

Shortly before he began this career-saving venture of “being a girl”, Mulvaney can be found mocking a female cheerleader in a sketch where he pretends to break his leg.

Gender identity is once again the smokescreen for misogyny, and negative criticism leads to an award-worthy performance of his being hurt and bullied. Mulvaney simply reverses the victim and offender. Women are bullies, he is the target. Many women recognise this pattern from relationships with abusive men.

The insult for women comes not from the fact that Mulvaney is given vast sums of money or attention, but that he is given it whilst performing an insulting version of what a woman is or how she experiences the world from birth.

Mulvaney has a very privileged background of successful financier male ancestors. Nothing says patriarchy more clearly than a man being offered huge sums of money by companies to pretend to be a woman, whilst actual women sit at home fretting how to feed their children during an economic crisis.

As the final part of his “365 days of girlhood”, Mulvaney undergoes very expensive facial feminisation surgery. This is suggested as the very epitome of ensuring he is seen as female. Conveniently little mention is made of the penis he retains. Shaved forehead bones might whisper and suggest “woman” more effectively, but a penis roars “man” at a deafening pitch.

In a sinister ending to this video, Mulvaney says he is “nervous for you” and suggests ominously that women will be punished in the future for their “transphobia”. It is an emotionally manipulative attempt to protect lucrative sponsorship and secure his brand from appropriate scrutiny.

Source: The performance of a lifetime | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

Artist behind Mona’s ladies-only lounge ‘absolutely delighted’ man is suing for gender discrimination | Mona | The Guardian

The creator of an art installation that has become the subject of a formal anti-discrimination complaint says she is “absolutely delighted” that the case has ended up in Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal.

Kirsha Kaechele’s installation Ladies Lounge opened in Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in 2020, and sees women who enter the space being pampered by male butlers and served champagne while being surrounded by some of the museum’s finest pieces of art. Those who do not identify as women are not permitted entry.

On Tuesday, the performance piece expanded beyond the subterranean halls of the museum on Tasmania’s Berriedale Peninsula, with New South Wales man Jason Lau seeking justice in the tribunal over the museum’s alleged discrimination against some visitors.

Kaechele, whose husband David Walsh owns Mona, said she was an “artist who works in the world and I tend to engage life as a medium”.

The opportunity to extend the performance aspect of Ladies Lounge was embraced by the artist and 25 female supporters, who entered Tuesday’s tribunal hearing wearing a uniform of navy business attire. Throughout the day’s proceedings, they engaged in discreet synchronised choreographed movements, including leg crossing, leaning forward together and peering over the top of their spectacles. Apart from the gentle swish of 25 pairs of nylon clad legs crossing in unison, the support party remained silent. When the proceedings concluded, the troupe exited the tribunal to the Robert Palmer song Simply Irresistible.

During her defence, Kaechele ran through a timeline of Australian women’s lived experience of discrimination and exclusion, including being barred from working in the public service sector once married, and receiving lower pay than men for the same work – something Mona’s own management had engaged in up until 10 years ago, the artist pointed out in her evidence.

Lau argued that denying men access to some of the museum’s most important works (there is a Sidney Nolan, a Pablo Picasso and a trove of antiquities from Mesopotamia, Central America and Africa in the women-only space) is discriminatory. Kaechele said that was the point.

“The men are experiencing Ladies Lounge, their experience of rejection is the artwork,” she said.

An experience in a pub on Flinders Island several years ago, when Kaechele and a girlfriend were advised by male patrons that they would feel “more comfortable” retiring to the ladies lounge, inspired the work.

Kaechele admits the museum has amassed a “large file” of complaints over Ladies Lounge. But apart from the current case, only one other complainant has sought formal redress.

Mona’s lawyer Catherine Scott told Guardian Australia the case was an unusual one because the artwork was both a physical entity – a lounge – and a piece of performance art.

“There is the participatory element of allowing women and denying men,” she says.

Mona’s legal team will be relying on the tribunal’s interpretation of section 26 of Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act, under which a person is permitted to discriminate against another person in a situation designed to promote equal opportunity for a group of people who are disadvantaged or have a special need because of a prescribed attribute – in this case gender.

The tribunal is expected to hand down its decision within a month.

Source: Artist behind Mona’s ladies-only lounge ‘absolutely delighted’ man is suing for gender discrimination | Mona | The Guardian

Proof ‘chestfeeding’ is no replacement for breast? 37-year-old trans woman who wanted to ‘bond’ with baby had to give up after two weeks because she wasn’t producing enough milk | Daily Mail Online

A trans woman who tried ‘chestfeeding’ had to give up after a fortnight, according to a case report that challenges claims biological men can breastfeed successfully.

The unidentified 37-year-old, from the Netherlands, failed to produce enough liquid to feed her newborn. She was making only 7ml a day, 100 times less than what the NHS says is needed by that point.

Medics in Amsterdam, who treated her, documented how she wanted to breastfeed in tandem with her partner to help with ‘bonding’ and share the workload.

The trans woman – who froze her sperm before transitioning – conceived her child with her partner, a biological female, via IVF in 2020 using her own sperm.

Despite months of preparation, she had to stop the ‘exhausting’ process two weeks after her child was born due to the low amount of milk produced.  

Induced lactation in trans women is not only controversial in itself. Experts are also concerned by how little we know of the long-term impacts of the process on children, given how some of the medications and hormones taken by trans women to induce lactation can leak into milk produced.

The medics said they didn’t analyse the nutritional value of the milk produced by their patient and this remained an area that needed further research overall.

Source: Proof ‘chestfeeding’ is no replacement for breast? 37-year-old trans woman who wanted to ‘bond’ with baby had to give up after two weeks because she wasn’t producing enough milk | Daily Mail Online

FA urged by government to consider banning transgender women from playing women’s football

The Football Association should consider banning transgender women from playing women’s football to remove any “unfair” competitive advantage, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has told Sky News.

The FA’s current transgender policy is that “gender identity should not be a barrier to participation in football” but eligibility is determined on a case-by-case basis.

Ms Frazer was discussing the transgender policy in light of issues that the football regulator could be asked to intervene on – if the change to football governance passes through parliament.

Asked further if she was urging football to follow other sports who have restricted women’s sport to those female at birth, Ms Frazer said: “I would encourage competitive sport to consider this very carefully.”

The FA had no immediate comment but its chief executive, Mark Bullingham, said earlier this month that they were waiting on international football bodies to decide on any changes to the policy.

World Athletics last year decided to prioritise sporting fairness over inclusivity by excluding those assigned male at birth from competing in female world ranking competitions.

The International Cricket Council also changed its policy last year so male-to-female players who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to take part in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken.

Source: FA urged by government to consider banning transgender women from playing women’s football

Memory holes and insider policy on conversion law and gender transition

The human rights commission in Australia’s state of Victoria has quietly disappeared its public claim that a parent refusing to support a child’s request for puberty blocker drugs is breaking the law.

Until recently, the website of the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission stated that such a refusal would be illegal under the state’s draconian Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021.

Asked about the unannounced removal of the claim, the commission’s spokesman said it was done as part of a review of website material about how the 2021 Act applied to parents and children.

The list of “illegal practices” still includes other examples involving parents and children. The spokesman did not answer GCN’s question whether the commission stood by its claim about the legal peril of parental opposition to puberty blockers.

Yesterday in Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales (NSW), a proposal to hold a public inquiry into a draft law to ban “conversion therapy” was defeated.

Parliament’s Selection of Bills committee had recommended that the Conversion Practices Ban Bill 2024 be referred for an inquiry, but this was voted down 21-20 by members of the ruling Labor Party, the Greens and the Legalise Cannabis Party.

In parliament on March 13, Attorney-General Michael Daley sought to justify the lack of open public consultation by arguing that the “targeted, confidential” soundings taken by the government enabled “frank discussion and contributions from stakeholders.”

Source: Memory holes and insider policy on conversion law and gender transition